Featured Fitz's Medieval Book Review

Wow! That's completely amazing. The closest thing I have that's analogous to your find is a copy I purchased some years ago on Ebay of a very scarce book published in the 1960s on the history of the Jewish community of the village in Baden where my maternal grandmother was born and her family had lived from 1724-1940. It was a great stroke of luck just to be able to acquire a copy of this book. It also turned out, completely by coincidence, that it was the personal copy, chock-full of handwritten notes and corrections, of a man who was not only the greatest expert during his lifetime on Jewish genealogy in Baden, but in his old age was my own personal mentor in learning about that subject, and was my third and more distant cousin in a half-dozen different ways. After his death, his family must have sold it on Ebay for essentially a few dollars because -- like many of our own families regarding our coin collections and libraries -- they had no interest in the subject of genealogy and didn't realize its importance.

 

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Hi All,

About 25 years ago I used interlibray loan to get a copy of ET Newell's TYRUS REDIVIVA. Tyrus Rediviva is a short monograph authored by Edward Theodore Newell and published by the American Numismatic Society in 1923. In its 23 pages of text and 3 pages of plates, Newell describes his understanding of the history of the output of the mint of Tyre for the time after the mint reopens, after Alexander the Great's conquest of the city, to the fall of the city to Ptolemy I (Soter) of Egypt in ca. 287/286 BC, whereupon Tyre becomes a mint of the Ptolemaic Empire. The fist Ptolemaic issue of Tyre was NOT known to Svoronos and, before Lorber's CPE, was only cataloged in this tiny ANS monograph.

The copy I received was lent from the Elihu Burritt Library of the Central Connecticut State University in New Britain Connecticut. That copy was originally annotated by the author. Newell made a correction and two additions to the published manuscript. I reported this to the ANS librarian, who made of note of it and added it to the Newell files he kept. The notes to the monograph (in the author's hand) are as follows:

• Cover: "To Lawrence Hamill with my compliments" ...
  Note: If there was a signature, it is now covered by the Library's bar code accession number. Any idea who Lawrence Hamill might be?

• Page 3: Under the listing for coin 1, die pair A-alpha is added "E.T.N., '↓', gr.",
  apparently referring to a coin in the author's collection with a different die orientation than the other coins.

• Page 5: Under the listing for coin 17, die pair D-theta is added "E.T.N., '↑' ",
  apparently referring to a coin in the author's collection with a different die orientation than the other coins.

• Page 10: In the seventh line on the page the dates have been changed from "(Oct. 311 - Oct. 310 B.C.)" to "(Oct. 310 - Oct. 309 B.C.)".

Since then, I realized that what we see in print is often slightly flawed or subject to correction or updates from the time the manuscript leaves the author to when it gets published and disseminated.

I'm sure @VD76 will gain a wonderful insight into the thinking that went into Metcalf's work. Congratulations on a second wonderful book find!

- Broucheion

 

Ok I did get this new book or better yet catalog today. It was a work in Simon Bendall's library. The seller described it as interesting.

Byzantine Copper Coins described as" A small collection of Byzantine copper coins including a number from Western Mints, a few of considerable rarity and some of great interest which cannot at present be attributed."

The collection was from Michael Dennis O'hara, one of the cowriters of Byzantine Coins and their values. The others David Sear and Simon Bendall.

So I immediately check it out, I wanted to see the unattributed, I also saw it had a Alexius II coin and I wanted to see that too (No Alexius II coins are known.) first thing, it is not a book but a preparation for auction catalog, when this auction occurred, or if it occurred, I do not know. The author had passed away in 2014. The pages are large cut outs of the coins, this must have been a prep before printing.

Upper left REX coin now attributed to Richard the Lion Heart in Cyprus. Then Alexius II Comnenus.


Another set of photos.



Now this one caught my attention, I have one of those, then I looked more closely, it is my coin. A Latin tetarteron. ( Center Coin.)

My photo


So I got a new and interesting book, my coin that was purchased last year as a unknown coin from Heidelberger Münzhandlung Herbert Grün e. K. Now suddenly has a new provenance, as being from the collection of one of the contributors to SBCV. Dennis Michael Ohara.

Part of his bio describing where his collection sold on the DO web site.

His collection, including the Tiber hoard coins, was sold in a joint-auction by Leu Numismatik and Numismatica Ars Classica in Zürich on 26 May 1993, partly to the then famous antiquities dealer Robin Symes. After his death, a few coins from his Nachlass appeared in Morton and Eden 75, 2 July 2015, where DO bought two 7th-century silver coins struck in Sardinia (BZC.2015.043 and BZC.2015.044).

 

Not a review, but just excited that I was able to nab this book (as they often get too expensive… the scuffs don’t bother me):


I’ve been a bit too busy for reading and coining lately (moving house and moving to a new employer), but looking forward to getting back into the hobby soon!

 

Congrats FitzNigel!

I can relate on how busy our personal lives can get. I hadn’t been able to read a book for awhile until recently.

Awesome find! I have heard that book is good. Just extremely difficult to come across and pricey!